Roses

Today we made our annual pilgrimage to the Rose Farm. SirBiggs had a dentist appointment near the zoo, and so went to work with ZooDaddy. So it was me, the two Roses and MisterTepps who had the task of choosing roses for the courtyard of the new house. How lovely it was to know that I actually needed to buy roses this time, and wasn't going to have to try and decide what in the garden to sacrifice for every purchase I was tempted to make. We invited the cousins along, which was wonderful, as it was their first time there. What a lovely morning we had!

First we wandered among the roses trying to get a feel for what we liked:

 We then took a break in the shade of the tea garden.

 The Roses,Teppity and cousins had fun on the play equipment:

The Mommies had fun drinking tea, browsing the catalogue and pondering our choices:

LadyLolo practiced her photography:

And we feasted on Apple Pie, Rose-shaped scones (with rose jam) and happy-face pizzas

At the end of the day we came home with eight new roses: Six for us and two as gifts for friends. Hopefully we will plant ours tomorrow.

In other news (a follow-up to yesterday's other news): Thanks to my red beads ZooDaddy and a student have ascertained that it takes 21 hours for food ingested by a zebra to pass through the digestive system (vitally-needed information, I'm told). Yes, that poor student had to sit all day watching the zebra, noting the time of each zebra poo and then looking though poo for red beads. Who says research is no fun?

Positions for Reading and Mythological Lampshades

After a standard Wednesday morning of drama lessons and choir teaching/participation, MissyGeorge arrived in my room with her box of readers from Sonlight and her "a" reader from Progressive Phonics. The reading bug has suddenly bitten, and it has bitten badly. This is a child who really did not have the slightest interest in learning to read a few months ago (despite lots of subtle - and not-so-subtle - hinting from me and her elder siblings). Now that she has decided she is interested she is unstoppable. She seems to be using a combination of word-shape reading and phonics, but with a definitely leaning towards the phonics approach. Despite having only started in earnest a week or so ago, she is already managing up to 5-letter blends. She does still confuse some letters, but this is improving hourly! What has amused me hugely today is how she sits to read. She has not picked one "normal" position all day. I do wonder if there are many teachers who would feel comfortable with their students reading like this in their classrooms:

MissG now reading comfortably

SirBiggs came up with another of his off-the-wall creative ideas today: He presented me with a ring of mythological creatures (each wearing unique T-shirts, appropriately) as a lampshade enhancer. I'm smitten - it's gorgeous!

My newly-enhanced lampshade

Cyclops, wearing a cyclops superhero T-shirt

Minotaur, wearing a t-shirt featuring a sword

In other news: ZooDaddy (who departed for work looking like Darth Vader this morning in his new anti-pollution cycling mask) has been feeding handfuls of my small red glass beads to some of the Zebras at the zoo. More of that later...

Mud

It is well-known that children and mud have a long history together - at the very least thousands and thousands of years. I came home yesterday morning to discover that our three youngest had decided to make a practical study of the as yet relatively unexamined properties of the new mud in our new garden (I was pleased to note that our brief encounters, explorations and discussions around cave art seem to have inspired at least some of the study methods chosen).

Pottery or Pie-making?

War paint on the warriors

"Cave" Art (on a tree)